Exile
by The 483
Summary: Spiritual, if not direct following of Pariah.  Arfter Merrill's diary was finished and mailed, this is where life in the present cuts in.   I will fix the discription when I figure out what to put here, when I finsih Pariah, most likely.
1. Chapter 1

**Dragon Age 2: Working Title: Exile**

_**I Do Not own the Rights to Dragon age, and long odds on me owning 'em to anything else you may recognize.**_

**Exile 1**

The powdery snow whipped in small whirlwinds as the small blizzard continued to coat the quiet evergreen forest in a white shroud. Outside of the strong gusts of wind buffeting the cloaked woman plodding her way south on the snow covered road, all was peaceful. It was so nice, that it would have been possible for her to forget the war the embroiled the entire world if she wasn't waist deep in its affairs. She snuggled deeper into her fur lined coat and pulled the hood of her cloak to further down over her face. Even in all of the fur lined clothes, she still shivered in the cold. She had forgotten how cold it was in Ferelden during… anytime, much less the middle of winter. Being in the Frostback Mountains did not help either. She sighed deeply, the exhaled breath shooting in a plume.

She tried to enjoy the peace, though, and let her mind wander away from the tip of her staff as it picked at the ground in front of her. This was actually the first time in… well, a very long time she could just take a look back at how she got to this point. 10 years in Kirkwall, making friends, finding love, and sort of starting a war which consumed the entire land of Thedas came readily to mind. That, along with when her status changed from Dalish Elf, to City Elf, to Human Noble all within the span of a week. She chuckled dryly to herself, and then frowned as she recalled all that she had lost to get to that point. After killing her mother, who had been possessed by a demon, she hit the lowest point she had every experienced in her short life. She felt completely alone, but he had broken though her funk and reminded her that, "whatever you do next, we do it together." But then there was also the time she overheard the enchantment dwarf talking to… himself apparently. But the tone and tension in his voice haunted her to this day.

"One day the magic will come back. All of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part, and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see." The following break out and revolt of all of the Circles in Thedas seemed to lend an ominous air to the chilling portend. She turned down a small, disused path that led back behind a large outcropping of snow covered rock. Further down the trail, a dark cave moth opened in the face of a granite wall. She walked in, the leather soles of her boot making scuffing noises where hay flooring was worn down to the stone. About fifty meters into the cave, it twisted at a 90 degree angle, and met a checkpoint guarded buy two heavily clothed soldiers wielding crossbows and long swords, one consulting a long roll of paper. She paused, and woman in a patched dress and two swaddled children was talking to the guards, and quite obviously very upset. After a long, onside conversation oh her talking, and the guard looking over her skeptically, he gestured for a pause, and began reading off of the roll again. She shivered as she listened to the rules again.

The first pulled her hood off, revealing a mane of thick shoulder length black hair, bangs drooping over her fore head, and partially obscuring the tattoos printed there. The tattoos covered the whole of her face, but did not detract from it. Large, green yellow eyes, a large, hooked nose, and small mouth and the pointed ears rounded out her prominent features. Coupled with her rail thin body, she was Pretty, but not beautiful. She was cute, very cute, but not conceded about it. She untied the neck string on the cloak, and shrugged it off into her hand, and folded it in half over her arm. Her outfit consisted of a set of thermal under garments, under a pair of tight, fur-lined pants, and matching vest along with a pair of fingerless fur gloves. She walked up to the woman in the patched dress and tapped her shoulder. The woman turned, her frustration turning to surprise as she looked down at the Elven woman.

"Here, take this." She said an offered the thick cloak. The other woman looked bewildered and simply stared. "Really," she continued, "freezing won't help you out at all, trust me." The woman reached and slowly accepted the cloak.

"Uh, thank you, Ma'am." She bowed slightly, and began working the cloak open and on. The Elf nodded, and walked up to the guard with the roll of paper.

Morning, Vic, what's the hassle?"

"This woman here refuses to present arms for inspection, Ma'am."

"But I have told him, I don't have any arms!" The Elf looked surprised.

"Really, none at all?" She asked, and the woman nodded.

"Damn, I haven't seen that in a long time. That's no good, here." The Elf reached under her vest and felt around for a second, before pulling out a six inch knife in a leather sheath. She handed it to the woman. "There you are, Serah, that clears it up, want to give her the once over so we can get on with this?" The Guard she called Vic nodded and took the woman's newly acquired weapon, and began going over the rules of the colony with her. The other guard helped the young Elvish Woman. She handed him her walking stick, and he examined it closely.

It had a core of Ironwood woven with metal alloys then covered in a black, glossy coating. The heads of three different height little dragons stared in three different directions from the top of the staff. It had belonged at one point to the late First Enchanter of the Kirkwall Circle, but as he was no longer needing it, she had received it from her husband after Orsino's death. While visiting Redcliff, she had had a blade, slender and long, grafted to the lower point of the staff for more effect in close combat situations.

"Anything else, Ma'am?" the guard said after his examination.

"Yes." The Woman replied, pulling up the bottom of her under shirt slightly and fishing out a small Elvish Knife. Her hand brushed the long, curving scar that had been carved by an assassin's blade when they were still hiding in the Free Marches. That was the first time the little knife, given to her by Hawke, had saved her life. The training that Isabela had patiently given her had helped as well. Her magic had not been able to help, as an ex-templar had been the one to deliver the blow, and it completely drained of Mana. The little blade had never left her person for more than these checks since.

"Very good, you are free to pass." She re sheathed her knife, and accepted her staff back from the guard. She walked pasted and after another few hundred torch lit feet, she moved into the billowing snow. The visibility was limited due to the heavy snowfall, but she knew the well worn path well. The road cut through the entire length of the mid-sized valley, starting where she was with what would be several productive acres of farmland come the spring. It continued on into the bustling settlement of Mary's Rest. She still did not know the tale of why Hawke named it thus, just something about how it held out against the forces of evil to protect the last of the good in a poisoned world. But, they had already parted company with Varric, and bard's were scarce these days. Either way, it was a thriving community of people looking to stay clear of the horrors of the war that was engulfing the world.

(*)

The blizzard let up shortly before the night fell, and now the small flakes of snow seemed to dance as the fell slowly to earth. Merrill sat on a log by a large bonfire, knees up to her chest, one arm around them, and the other holding a steaming mug of cocoa as she stared at the white dropping from the inky heavens. She sipped her drink, and let her mind clear. She jumped slightly when a hand fell on her padded shoulder, and she saw the familiar callused mitts of her love. She letter he legs sink, and went to take another drink from her cocoa, but nothing came out. She had blanked for s long that the drink had cooled and frozen in her hand. She set it down and picked his hand off of her shoulder.

"Hello, Hawke," she paused and yawned, "I space just a little, what time is it?" he smiled softly as he lifted her to her feet.

"It is time for you to go to bed, Mistress Amell." She smiled as he hugged her close to his chest. In public, they were using his mother's maiden name because many factions were looking for Hawke's after the death of Meredith. It still thrilled her to have a close mate after the isolation she had faced the rest of her life. They walked hand in hand to the cottage that had founded the village all that time ago. Before she knew it, she was striped to her bra and panties, Laying in bed, pillowed on Hawke's broad chest, feeling his warmth leech into her bones as the fire burned softly across the room. Hawke stroked her hair gently as he settled, and asked her about her trip to Redcliff. She sighed.

"Nothing. Many remember, and the fade is still scarred from the things that happened during the blight, but there has been nothing new for years now, and I could see no breeches, and as far as I was able to find out, no one has heard anything since the battle at Vigil's Keep." She sighed, and nuzzled closer to his warmth as she felt sleep pulling her down.

"Ok, well, someone finally came through, and we now have a location on the hut where it all started, so we set out for Ostagar the morning." She nodded as sleep won out and she drifted pf to a dreamless sleep.

**End, tear it a part if you like, revision might happen, because this is what I am doing until my laptop works again.**


	2. Catherine

**Dragon Age 2: Working Title: Exile**

_**I Do Not own the Rights to Dragon age, and long odds on me owning 'em to anything else you may recognize.**_

**Exile 2: Catherine**

Merrill had to admit that there was one good thing that came with the fall of the Circles, and that was explosion of magical knowledge that swept the land. She had learned so much when they had ventured to the Tevinter Imperium a few years back, not just in terms spells, but general knowledge of magic. It was hard to find someone to tutor her there, as she had gone in as Hawke's personal slave, and training your slave in the ways of magic was not often done. But, where there is gold, there is a way, and after a month of searching, one was found.

The very first principle that the instructor pounded into her head was that Magic was like a muscle. The more it was used, the stronger it got. Merrill had noticed the amount her power had grown during the events in Kirkwall, in the size and force of her spells, and the depth of her Mana pool. And now, she was more powerful than she ever would have had guessed. She had not heard of many mages growing to levels of this power, but she supposed this was normally due to demonic possession. But Merrill was safe by the logic that Hawke had put forward all those years ago in her hovel in the Alienage. She forgot the exact phrasing, but it was smething about: "What can a demon tempt you with when you already have all that you want?" After she had led to the death of her mother, and smashed the Voided Eluvian, she realized what it was she wanted. All that she wanted was to spend the remainder of Hawke's natural life by his side. She did not take into account her own lengthy life span, because, with the life they lived, it was not likely that either of them would die of natural causes.

Another thing she learned quite a bit about, was the properties of the Fade, and how to manipulate it's properties. Now when a Mage cast a spell, say a fireball, the Mana used does not actually power the spell. Mana is actually the special energy, found only in mages and lyrium, that allows said user to "touch" the Fade. It is through this contact with the mage, that the magic is piped through the Fade and into the physical world.

The Fade is full of a boundless energy that is reachable only through a mage. As she had studied and learned more about this Half-world, she became fascinated about just how little was actually known, although mages had been using it for years. She had seen some undoubtedly ancient texts, in Elvish, while they had been in Tevinter, and, while studying these Arlathan era missives, gained a greater understanding of the properties of the fade. Spatially, if that was a way it could be referred to, the Fade lay draped over the entire surface of the world, with an immeasurably small space between it and the real world. Magic occurred when something caused the two to touch. The way modern mages accomplished this was most inelegant and brutal. It was akin to throwing rocks on a suspended sheet until it touched the ground. Like grinding elfroot with a war hammer as compared to a mortar and pestle. Merrill, fascinated by the methodology these papers described, (she did not allow the instructor to guess that she could read the papers,) pored as much of her un-tutored hours that Hawke would allow reading and practicing. Indeed, so enraptured had she been, she would most likely not have eaten nor slept for days had he not come home every night. It was during this time that she came across an… oddity with her husband, and that was the fact that during the entire time the she had been his slave, for appearance sake, he was very attentive to her when he was around. She asked him about it, and he spelled it out for her.

Even though he abhorred slavery, and would not, if at all possible, allow any slaver he saw to live, he was shamefully, and extremely turned on by the whole scenario. Merrill, without the embarrassment she would have shown to such a thing in Kirkwall, laughed so hard that there were tears in her eyes, and a stitch in her side. Maybe it was the way that, after her exile, she began to quit trying to be Elvish, and started just living for herself, but she had not been offended, but was actually flattered.

Merrill now was possessed of a surgical precise ability to use her Mana, and it opened up a whole new explosion of possibilities when using magic. One ability allowed her to pull memories out of the Fade. When a lot of death occurred, or when a powerful mage did… well, about anything, it left ripples in the fade. And talented mages could pull these images and sounds out, and watch the "ghosts" to learn thing. That is why Her and Hawke were at the snow swept ruins of Ostagar, watching in quite sadness as a massive, scarred ogre ended the reign of King Cailan. Merrill waited until the last of Loghain's men disappeared from the ridge to the right, and dismissed the specters with a wave of her hand. The "ghosts" lost focus and faded like dissipating smoke.

"That's a nice trick the little elf knows." A feminine voice echoed over the calm chilly air. Merrill whirred in the direction of the noise, but could not locate the source at first. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end a she and Hawke scanned the area and the snow continued to blanket the ruins. After a minute of non-discovery, the voice rang out again. "Up here, sweetheart." Looking up at the prompt, the twosome observed a woman with orange hair sitting in the black arms of a large dead tree. Well, crouching, really. Her right knee was drawn up and was supporting her right elbow as the hand hung limply in front of her. The other leg swayed slightly at full extension below her, while her left hand gripped her weapon, blade sunk into the branch she was perched upon. "So this is the mighty champion of Kirkwall and his Elvish woman." Hawke, never one to be intimidated, replied in an almost jovial, non-threatening tone.

"I am afraid you are mistaken, miss…" He paused so she could offer her name, but after a few seconds of silence he continued. "I do not hail from Kirkwall, or anywhere in the Marches for that matter. My home is in Lothering." She gave him a wry smile that showed she did not buy his tale, and with a smooth movement, slid off of the branch and landed softly on the ground, where Merrill got her first good look at the stranger.

She stood a short amount taller than Merrill, but was filled out rather than trim, with large breast, but well proportionate to her body mass. Her thick orange hair fell across her shoulders and in a spot across her face, matching nicely with her emerald eyes. Her body was swathed in what looked like a suit of armor comprised of pieces of several garments and suits of plate mail. The right arm was composed of black metal, arrayed with spikes and spined joints at points of articulation down to the claw like fingers of the glove. This was underplayed with a thick chain mail over a heavy cloth. The left was bare from rounded metal shoulder pad to wrist, showing red painted glyphs on the flesh, and a dark leather fingerless glove with a metal collar. The torso was a soft leather corset and jutting metal chest plate of grey steel, with a ridge of downy feathers or rabbit fur lining a hood and spilling across the shoulders, and a red and black half cape draping down the back. A belt with a large, pointed buckle held another piece of fir and hide across her middle, of glossy black leather pants with steel knee guards, and a pair of thick, fir lined leather boots.

Her weapon was interesting, because Merrill had first taken it for a staff, but it was more like a sword on a stick. A flat, squared blade about 3 feet in length was attached to an ornate and colorful pole around 5 or 6 feet long, similar in style to a halberd. Feathers and bead hung around the area where the blade attached to the pole, and a spiked, multi faceted emerald dominated the pole end. She held it loose but ready at her side as she advanced.

"You cannot deceive me, Ser Hawke," She said, her predatory smile not fading, and her voice flowing like silk. "I was there, in Kirkwall, when the Circle fell, and you slew the Knight Commander of the Templar." Merrill had un slung her own staff as the woman continued advance, but Hawke stood easy, no worry entering his features.

"Another crazed Templar intent on attempting to extract revenge for imaginary grievances?" He asked, at which point she pauses, spun her blade and buried it a few inches in the dirt before leaning forward on it.

"No. I was on the other side of the battle, when Orsino lost himself and turned." A flicker of what could have been pain flashed through her gaze, but was quickly gone."

"Then what can I do for you?" Hawke asked casually. She shook her head.

"Not just for me, Ser. I have an Elven friend, who was subdued and captured by a group of slavers based in the Wilds." Her face changed from it's confident grin to a look of uncomfortable difficulty. "I need your help to rescue her. If you aid me, I will devolve into your service." She gave a short bow, before straightening up again.

"I am sorry," Hawke said, "but I am afraid I will not aid someone who will not give me their name." Her face had fallen at the "will not" but softened into an embarrassed grin as her affront to manners was addressed.

"I… you may call me Catherine, Serah Hawke."

**I am leaving it here for now. The Armor she wears in the Female Mage Champion Armor, because it is just way to awesome for me not to feature. Anyway, my laptop is totally f'd, and all of my other files are on that, so all my other things that I had started, and all my backup files are lost, for, what looks like a long time. So… I'll keep everyone posted.**


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